


This Is Not Real

by kho



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: AU, Episode: s05e07 Ina Paha (If Perhaps), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:04:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5777809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kho/pseuds/kho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You changed your shirt.” Steve blinks at him. “None of this is real. We killed Wo Fat at the docks.”  [This is an alternate version of ep 5x7 Ina Paha (If, Perhaps).]</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not Real

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of nowhere, I was not expecting this, except I watched Ina Paha and then the one about Danny's backstory with Terrance Howard and his partner Grace in NJ back to back, and... I just had to do it.

Everything is swimming. Danny to his left, so sarcastic. So wild. In a Hawaiian shirt, and it’s funny. But not. Stark room. Green walls. A shock to his gut, piercing pain, again, and again, and again. Muscles tensing. Kamekona in cuffs, that’s wrong. Kamekona the thug, tribal tattoos covering his bald head, wrong, wrong, wrong.  

Danny in a black Hawaiian shirt, so much color, orange and green, wedding ring on finger, big big smile, face bashed in, bloody, blue button up shirt torn, shouting his name and stumbling. Wait.

“Danny.”

“Steve. You okay?”

Steve blinks, clears his vision. Still swimming. So so so nauseous. Sweat dripping in his eyes. That bitch, with the taser, grinning at him. “What?”

“Shut up,” Wo Fat says, and shoves Danny into a chair next to him.

“Danny?”

“Steve.”

“You changed,” Steve says, blinking to clear his vision. “You changed your shirt. When did you change your shirt.”

Danny struggles against the binds the woman has used to tie him to the chair. “What are you talking ab--”

Car crashing into them, Danny hitting his head against the window. Window crashing, gun smashing into Steve’s face. Danny saying Steve. Steve. Steve. Black.

The woman shoves Steve’s head forward and jabs a needle into his neck. So hard. So forceful.

“Hey,” shouts Danny as Steve’s eyes droop, and unfocus. “Hey what are you giving him?”

Wo Fat floats in front of him. Such an ugly scar. So ugly, what fire does to a man’s face. “Something to help him tell the truth.”

“You son of a bitch, you are dead, do you hear me?”

Ugly. So ugly. Smile a snarl. So disgusting. Wo Fat. So much pain. Wo Fat has caused so much pain. Killed his mother.   No he didn’t. Killed his father. No he didn’t. Danny saved his father. No. Yes he did. He didn’t. He couldn’t. Killed Jenna.

No. He saw Jenna. Jenna’s boyfriend was in a bike accident. Was going to propose to her. He doesn’t know that though, because he never knew Jenna, she never told him the story. She was dead on cold cement floor with a bullet hole in her chest. No, she was in the hospital looking for her boyfriend. She was alive. Alive. No.

“Danny?”

Danny, shouting, face red, blue button up shirt tight across his chest as he strained, jerked around in the chair. So alive. So full of fury. “You will be dead, I will kill you with my bare hands!” So alive.

“Danny, is this real?”

Danny flicks his eyes to him. “What?" 

“You changed your shirt.” Steve blinks at him. “None of this is real. We killed Wo Fat at the docks.”

Danny closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Babe, they gave you drugs. I don’t know what drugs, but you’re fucked in the head right now, okay? This. This is real.”

“Danny my dad’s alive,” Steve says, and he grins. His heart swells. Dad. He can’t wait to hug him. He needs to hug him again. Hug him and never, ever let go.

“Dead, do you hear me,” Danny growls, a low, menacing sound, not a tone of voice Steve has ever heard from him. “I will squeeze the breath out of your lungs.”

“Enough of this,” the man with the burned and charred mask of Wo Fat says, and sits down on a bucket in front of Steve. “Where is my father?”

Steve blinks. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

Pain. So much pain as the stun baton connects with his pecs. His blood races. It boils. His fists clench. Too much, too much, too real, no, this isn’t real, this isn’t, it is. It is.   It’s not.

“The Navy’s taught you well.”

Steve looks up at Wo Fat and his brain clears just enough to think, if it is. If it’s real. “I’m gonna kill you. And then I’m gonna find your father and I’m gonna kill him just for having you.”

Wo Fat smiles, that ugly smile. That scorched smile. “You’re going to have to kill your mother too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s more responsible for who I am today.”

So much anger. It wells up inside him and surges, surges and raises in waves, boiling up to the top and he feels like his veins are going to pop from the pressure. “Stop talking in circles!”

“Steve he’s baiting you,” Danny yells, and Wo Fat turns to him. He cracks him over the head with the baton and Steve snarls, tries to turn over his chair, because real or not, that’s Danny, not Danny, never Danny.

“This is between me and you, motherfucker, you leave him out of it!” Wo Fat turns back to him but Steve can’t take his eyes off of Danny. He can hear Danny breathing, grunting, see him squeezing his eyes shut and blood dripping down his face.   “Danny. Danny?”

“I’m good,” Danny squeezes out, spitting blood on the floor. “Still here. Take it all day, you piece of shit,” he says, glaring up at Wo Fat. “You bring it, I take it. All day. Every day. Bring it over here!”

Steve’s voice cracks as he yells when Wo Fat brings the baton to Danny’s stomach and turns it on. “Stop, stop it,” he yells, struggling, too tired, can’t see, sweat in his eyes, heart thready, weird pulse, seeing orange and red, Danny in a Hawaiian shirt, Danny in a blue button up.

Danny screaming, head tilted back and hands in fists and sparks flying from the baton. Too long. It’s been on too long. Veins are popping out on Danny’s neck, it’s wrong. Wrong.

“Please. Please,” Steve says, quiet. So quiet. Begging. “Stop.”

He blinks his eyes open again and there’s no more screaming, just Danny gasping for air. Gasping, better than screaming. Wo Fat sitting in front of him, sick smile on his cracked broken face.   “You know nothing about the real Doris McGarrett do you?”

Steve breathes in. “I know that she was assigned to kill your father but instead your mother died in that op.”

He sits back. Seems to calm. “Yes. And she never forgave herself for murdering an innocent woman who had just become a new mother.”

There’s a flash of almost guilt at that. Almost. Just barely there. The things he doesn’t know about his mother. The things she won’t say. The things she’s done. He doesn’t even know if his mother is one of the good guys or one of the bad.

“Steven, he baiting you, stop listening to him,” Danny says, and that earns him a smack from the woman that Steve had almost forgotten was still in the room.

Wo Fat continues. “That pain and anguish caused her to do something quite remarkable. She took in that child and raised it as her own for several years. Until her superiors discovered this and forced her to abandon that child.”

My mother.

Our mother.

Steve meets his eyes. “That was you.”

“You see? Doris McGarrett was my mother too.” The smiles makes bile rise in Steve’s throat. Sick, angry, acidic bile. “If Doris knew where my father was she would have told me. But with your persistence I can’t help but believe you know where your government is holding him.”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t.”

He’s not expecting it. He should have been expecting it. He doesn’t track what’s happening until Danny’s screaming again, legs jerking against the restraints, hands in fists. Sparks. So many sparks. So painful and blue. Blue is hotter than red, hotter than orange. It doesn’t make sense. The sea is blue, and blissful, soothing, cool. Blue is supposed to mean cold. Blue is the color of bubblegum shaved ice. Gracie’s favorite.

Danny. Screaming.

“I don’t know! I’m telling you the truth I don’t know where your father is!”

Wo Fat just levels him with an even look. “That may be true. But I need to be convinced.”

Steve screams so loud and long when he hits Danny with the stunner for a third time that he passes out.

+

When he comes to he can’t open his eyes at first. He registers silence around him. Maybe he’s in bed. Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe his dad is down stairs right now making bacon. Maybe his mom is in the next room practicing magic tricks. Maybe he’s 16 and this nightmare of a life has never happened at all.

“Steve.”

“Danny,” Steve slurs, and opens his eyes. “Danny?”

Danny breathes out long and loud through pursed lips. That breath means you scared me. It means I’m about to lose it. It means I’m trying to get it together. “Okay.”

“You’re not real, Danny,” Steve says, closing his eyes. Too easy to pretend he’s there if he can see him like that.

“I’m real,” Danny says. “I’m real, buddy.” Hand on his shoulder, cold, cold fingers like a ghost. They make him shiver and cringe. “Hey! Hey come on, don’t you think he’s had enough? He’s had enough, you’ve fucked him up enough, it’s obviously not making a difference!”

Danny is yelling. He hates it when Danny is upset.

Jab of a needle in his neck and just like that, he swings back as hard as he can, connects with her head. Hears her stumble backwards, the chair follows her. It falls to the ground, he hits his head. Breaks one of his hands free, grabs the IV pole. Hits her on the head, the body. She grabs it. He uses the chair as a shield.

Fight, fight, fucking fight, he will not tire, he will win, doesn’t need to think, just be, just breathe, just do, Navy taught him this, muscle memory, wraps his legs around her body, holds her down, wraps an arm around her neck the strap still connected to the chair and chokes.

Chokes her. Chokes the breath out of her. Chokes her until she is no more.

“Steve!”

Stand. Get up. Get up and stand. Look around the room. Get out of here.

“Hey, Superman, snap out of it, untie me!”

“Not real,” Steve mumbles, and then climbs on the chair up to the pipe, breaks it. Water falls down, cascades all over him, the floor. Drink some. Hydration. Need hydration.

“Steven I am real! I am here! I am right here, untie me!"

Steve grabs the stunning baton, think, think, think. Pose her. Sit her up. Prop her up. Breaks a broom, jabs it under her chin. Sitting on the overturned bucket. Maneuvers his chair back to where he was. 

So much water all over the floor. This will work. This has to work.

“Steve, god damnit, I am real!”

He sits, and rubs a hand over his face. Doesn’t look at Danny. “No. I get to choose. I get to choose which one is real.”

“Untie me god damnit.”

He smiles, shakes his head. “I pick you being happy Danny. I don’t pick this life for you. I pick the one where you’re just the guy that saved my dad. We don’t know each other.”

“Listen to me, Steve, listen, I am real. Years. We’ve known each other four years! And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I did not save your Dad. Your dad is dead. And I hate to say it, babe, I do, but I hope it hurts you right now because maybe you’ll snap out of it, okay? He’s dead Steve. And I’m real." 

Steve shakes his head. “You’re not real. I dreamed the you I know. The real you is happy, Danny. The real you is still married, and happy.”

“That’s not real, Steve. This is real. I am real. I am really here. Un fucking tie me!”

“The real you calls Rachel baby doll, and laughs when you talk to her Danny. You’re happy and in love. That’s the one I choose.”  He blinks and nods, taking stock of the room. He’s where he was. Wo Fat won’t know anything’s changed until it’s too late. Until he’s standing in the water. “The real you still has Matty.”

A noise. It breaks his heart. Hurt. Danny is hurt. Danny is not real. He did not hurt Danny.

“You were with me, Steve. You were with me, he was in a metal drum, babe. That’s what’s real. Matty is dead, and you were with me. You saw it. And that’s my baby brother, man. You think I’d choose him dead over anything else if it weren’t the truth?”

So heartbroken. Danny’s heart has been so broken. Broken and beaten and torn to shreds. His voice is full of tears. If he looks he’ll see tears. He doesn’t look.

“Steven fucking McGarrett untie me god damnit!”

“You’re not real.” He blinks. “But if you are, shut up and get your feet out of the water.”

“You fucking menace, you moron, you animal, I will kill you myself if you do not--”

Wo Fat steps in and Danny abruptly shuts up. Steve is slumped just like he was when Wo Fat left but the pipes have burst and Wo Fat must know something is wrong, he must, what if he investigates too hard from too far away, what if he can see the broom, what if he knows?

“Get that dumb look off your fucking face,” Danny spits out. “He’s passed out, you dumb shit, how much abuse do you think the human body can take?”

Wo Fat steps forward once. Twice.

“We do not know where your piece of shit father is, but I for one hope he’s dead. I hope he’s dead and desecrated and ants and beetles ate his flesh. I hope maggots filled his eyes and ate him while he was still alive. I hope a hyena ate his dick off!”

Step. Another step. Water. Just barely in the water. Just barely. Would be so much better if he were deeper.

“You wanna come at someone, come at me you psycho! Come on!”

Three strides, and he’s an inch deep and Steve looks up just in time to see him see the broom stick holding up the dead girl and down goes the stun baton into the water.

Danny screams just as loudly as Wo Fat does, because his feet are tied to the chair and he can’t get them out of the water. There’s no time though, no time for sorry, Wo Fat has a gun so Steve charges forward, wrestles, tackles, punches, wild arm flails, intercepts hits, gives his own, slams into the shelves, knocks the gun out, slams him into the floor, gets slammed into the floor.

He looks up to see Danny tied to the chair, uses his legs to pull himself up. They feel real. The legs feel real. The blue eyes are real. That’s Danny’s mouth, open and yelling. “Danny?”

“Duck, duck,” Danny yells, cringing, and screams as Steve ducks and the hard metal thing that Wo Fat threw hits him square in the chest.

Steve grabs Danny’s arm and pulls himself up. “You’re really here?”

“Gonna kill you,” Danny hisses out. “Just kill that fucker and then we can talk about what’s real and isn’t!”

Charges Wo Fat, tackles him into the wall, lifts him up and slams him into the light.

They both fall to the ground.

Guns. Two of them. Why are there two? Are they real? Which one is real?

They both scrabble at the same time and Steve can hear Danny yelling his name, horror, horrified, devastated, been through so much, they’ve both been through so damn much.

Gun pointed at his head. Gun pointed at Wo Fat’s.

Mexican stand off.

Who will pull the trigger?

“You wouldn’t shoot me. Would you? Brother?”

“You’re not my brother.”

The answer is both.

“Steve!”

+

Steve is slumped against the shelves when he comes to, his team, family, Ohana around him. Kono, and Chin, and Lou cutting Danny loose, and… “Danny?”

Danny’s grabbing his hands, both of them, and yanking him up. Steve stumbles against him and Danny pulls him up to him, puts Steve’s hands on his face and glares up into his eyes. “Real, okay? You feel me? This is me. I am real, god damn you!”

Steve blinks. “Where’s my Dad, Danny?”

“He died four years ago, buddy, I’m sorry.”

Steve rubs his thumbs against Danny’s bloody, bruised, sweaty cheeks, and nods. “Real.”

The hug is real. It’s as real as it gets, as he shatters into a million pieces and begins to sob.


End file.
